Winning Candidates Chess was like oxygen, says Viswanathan Anand

New Delhi: Five-time winner Viswanathan Anand feels he had become too "reliant" on computers last year and losing the World Championship was an extremely "testing" period for him but the Candidates win was like "oxygen" as it earned him the right to play a rematch against Magnus Carlsen.

Three losses over 10 games without a win and the world Championship title was in tatters last November but Anand soon scripted a historic turnaround when he registered three wins in 14 games without a defeat en route to his Candidates title victory.

"It was a very, very testing period. Even 2013, there were good and bad moments but I felt the bad moments more intensely then the good ones, which is unfortunate because I can also look back on many positive things in my first six world championship. But what I kept remembering was how I was dropping the match," he said.

"I think many errors had cropped up in my approach to play chess. I was becoming reliant on computers. I was not oblivious to it but I was not able to address the problem exactly right. I didn't have time to fix anything," Anand, who was here to highlight the role of chess in Business Analytics in an NIIT event, said.

After losing his World Championship title, Anand bowed out in the group stage of the London rapid and also his performance at Zurich in March was not upto the mark.

Anand said: "May be my opponents didn't focus on me properly or probably I was playing more freely. I had one of my best results in Candidates and I'm playing in World Championship in November.

"The dominant emotion right now for me is the buzz that I have won the candidates. I needed a good result and it felt like oxygen. So I think I will take that with me, not only that I qualified, I had a good result.

"I got my confidence back and I am very optimistic now. I know even if I face the same mistakes, I will act now differently," added Anand, who held the World title from 2007 to 2013.

The 44-year-old Indian said he can't elucidate the reason of his success at Candidates but stressed on the importance of recovering emotionally after the World Championship loss.